Taxi-West Sumatra
By Jim Davis

A taxi (so they called it)-
Dented, pierced, rusted Survivor
of battles.
Insurrections?
Sometime in its forgotten past.
Doors faded blue, green, red and mud
But "better than the bus",
Medan to Sibolga.
(If you have nerves of steel)
"May Allah be with you."
Lurching, bouncing, careening.
Each approaching vehicle
Eminent Disaster!
Collision certain
until last second diversion.
Allah was with us.
Towns a lesser blur.
Markets, ox-carts, ancient Harleys,
smiling faces.
Snapshots in the mind.
Later at night
Each thump
a hole in the road?
Creature?
Or worse?
Better not to look!
Slowed finally
By steepening hills
Cresting in pines on caldera rim.
Gentle, cool breezes across
Lake Toba.
Graceful, sweeping profiles
Batak homes arching ecstasy
of the roofs silhouetted.
Bursts of starlight mirrored in
glassy stillness of paddies.
Serpentining off the Barisan Hills,
Beckoned by the Indian Ocean.
But stopped by the roaring surf
its mist cooling us, calming us
as we paid our fare.
Thankful to walk, and live.

May 2007

Huixtla Mine, Guerro, Mexico
By Jim Davis

El Sol?
Hot, Shimmering?
Beating down.

Craggy desert mountains
Sparse of green and shade
Overwhelming reds & yellows.
Spurious breezes send dust devils
aimlessly up the canyon.

Stark blue sky framed by steel.
A mine?
Quest for La Plata far below
in sultry tunnels.

Uneasy hands grip the cable
Leaning over black abyss
to board the swinging bucket.
"Descender"
Crowded? four in this steel can.

Shaft walls a blur.
Silence accentuated by
Pinging cable,
Echoing down the depths.
Our eyes upon that lifeline.
Wondering how bad that rust,
(Are those frays?)

Rock and mud -
A tunnel into humid cacophony
Drills, screaming air motors, muckers
Scooping broken rock -
glinting sulphides - paint of mud
Inches of vein, tons of rock.
"Arriba"

April 2007

Old Man Turner

By Jim Davis

Old Virgil Turner, a bachelor, lived in a log cabin across the street from our house in Ten Sleep. The cabin reeked from the odor of tanning deer hides, stale food and Mr. Turner. Sometimes a skunk would crawl through a hole in the stone foundation and add a whole new layer of fragrance. Mr. Turner never washed dishes, having no running water, but put them in the oven instead. He said that killed the germs better anyhow. The windows, stained from years of wood stove, kerosene lantern and cigarette smoke, admitted only a bit of depressing twilight, dimmed even further by an ever present haze of cigarette smoke and the smoldering wood cook stove.

Mr. Turner, gaunt and grizzled from a life in the mountains, kept his own council, marked by a stern demeanor, accentuated by his dirty broad brimmed hat, dented and roughly shaped ranger style. They said he'd killed a man once ("one in need of killing") and that he'd been a prospector in the mountains far south of town. Perhaps, I thought, he even knew the location of the Lost Cabin Mine. The killing and the mine, I imagined, no doubt were cause and effect.

I wondered what he kept in a hole in the floor, a broken void barely visible in the dirty planks. I thought perhaps it might be a hoard of gold, though sometimes he pitched his garbage there, followed by his dog to tidy things up. One time the old man made a deerskin pullover shirt. Unfortunately his tanning process, which consisted of peeing on the hide in a washtub, wasn't complete and instead of soft buckskin, he got rawhide which shrunk and hardened as it dried. I heard him calling one morning and saw him at his doorway, arms stretched out, held rigid by the drying rawhide. I cut the shirt off with my pocket knife before it strangled him. He was always grateful for that but never told me what, other than garbage, he kept beneath the floor.

After he died someone bought the place, fumigated it and dressed it up with new wallboard, floor, and even siding so it didn't even look like a cabin anymore. The place lost a lot of charm in this bit of modernization and I doubt if the new owners even checked under the floor.

March 2007

His First Day in the Field

By Ed Post

During the first uranium boom of the 1950s, when employed by the U. S. Geological Survey, I was mapping a quadrangle in Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks of the southern Black Hills. The Survey hired a college student from a northeastern college as my geologic field assistant. He'd never worked in the field, and had never been "out west" in his life. He flew to Denver, signed on, then flew to Rapid City, where I met him and drove him to our base of operations in Hot Springs, South Dakota.

The next morning we headed for the field. By 10 AM we were both rather well- endowed with wood ticks, and not wanting to develop Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and being out in the boondocks, we stripped and picked the ticks off our bodies and clothes.

Later, while eating lunch, we watched a grasshopper jump into a ragged spider web and immediately get tagged by a black widow spider.

In mid-afternoon, we encountered a prairie rattlesnake, which we successfully circumnavigated.

Near the end of the workday, we were working along the edge of the Cheyenne River, heading for a bluff of sandstone, when we spooked a genuine mountain lion from the shade under the bluff big puffy claws, long full tail. It scrambled up the slope near the bluff and was gone in an instant, thankfully.

So for his first day in the field "out west" my field assistant had met for the first time in his life wood ticks, a black widow spider, a rattlesnake, and a mountain lion. I would have liked to have read the letter he wrote home to his family that evening.

He went on to independently map the Jurassic rocks (Sundance formation) in part of the quadrangle, ultimately earned a PhD in geology, worked for a while for an oil company, and eventually became a college geology professor.

February 2007

GAS HILLS, EXPLORATION CAMP, 1957

by Jim Davis

A banshee wail.

Wind.

Ceaseless before the storm.

Blasting sand against the trailer.

A pebble sometimes.

Startling us from our thoughts.

The 'Airstream' rocks.

As wanting to tumble

like an empty beer can across the prairie.

But stands

filtering through some grit

to season our supper.

Gas light flickering with unfelt drafts.

Plotting data from the drill.

Reading stories in the rocks

Of ancient streams.

Perhaps their sands host ore

far below.

Fitful sleep.

Dreams induced by gusting zephyrs.

Wakened by sudden, ominous quiet.

It will be snowing in the morning.

Mud beneath.

Mired, snarling trucks.

Samples mixed with ice.

Freezing fingers, snarling driller.

Coffee from a 'Stanley'

Warmth from rags soaked in diesel

Burning in a rusty drum

Black smoke, frozen gloves, wind again.

More coffee.

Drill stem turning, turning,

slowly sinking

Revealing Earth's secrets.

But Family waiting.

Damn, I'll be glad to go to town.

January 2007

HELICOPTERING IN NEVADA

Bob Kinkel

When I joined Texas Gulf Sulfur in 1970, I was assigned the Basin and Range in Nevada and California, and had one of the company's small Bell helicopters at my disposal.

Our first pilot, Wayne, was a Vietnam vet, and I soon learned not ask him to get exactly on the outcrop Iwas interested in. I did not enjoy standing on and then jumping off the skid. I also preferred open areas after he clipped the top of some junipers a few times.

One time he dropped me off and was to pick me up on a fair sized mine dump we had spotted a few miles down the range. He had to return to one of our fuel drops and was to come back about 3 or 4 pm. I got to the dump and saw him wandering around looking for the dump. I Had my signal mirror out and I `m sure I hit him several times, but no response. I even sent out a couple of signal flares. Finally on a sweep north he got my mirror signal and landed.

That experience, and others, made me aware of how difficult air searches can be.

One afternoon we were returning to Las Vegas from examining mines in California. I was watching the rocks go by and my assistant was talking with the pilot.

All of a sudden the engine died and we began to fall. My heart was in my mouth but I was able to yell at the pilot to do something. Finally the engine started, our falling slowed, and we continued our trip to Las Vegas. I asked the pilot what the hell happened and it turned out he and Mike were talking about autorotating. So he demonstrated.

When we got on the ground I firmly asked him not to do that again.

Later we had the self proclaimed "oldest living helicopter pilot in New Mexico." One time we got caught in a real windstorm when we were returning to Hawthorne. We were being tossed all over the sky over those big dumps at Gabbs. I yelled to land on the dump and Joe replied ,

"Land hell I'm just hanging on." We eventually made down and landed in the square at Gabbs and went to a saloon for a beer.

Another time, we were quite late getting to a remote area high on a range near Winnamucca. The wind had picked up and the Bell couldn't climb. Joe said he would get me there and headed out over the valley on the east side of the range. Joe started circling and climbing, and circling and climbing until we were at about 7,000 feet and about 5000 terrifying feet off the ground. I felt like we were a seed pod drifting on the wind. It was a scary half hour.

We headed west to the upper part of the range, but the winds were still too strong even up here. So we decended and headed home.

One afternoon after the winds had defeated us and we were heading home to Mina down a long pediment surface. It was a scary situation and I expressed my concern. Sort of jokingly I reminded him there were claim posts along here and asked him to look out. He appeased me by hovering over the sunbathing "girls" in Mina.

My fear of claim posts spread very rapidly through the company, even to New York, and we all laughed about it.

December 2006

A hippy ride- A modified excerpt from "Alone- Guardian Angel- Gunga din"
A Memoir by Warren I. Finch

Recently, I was reminded of an experience I had over 50 years ago in May 1952, when I was driving to Circle Cliffs in Utah from Grand Junction. I left in the morning and drove down U.S. 50 with the Book Cliffs to the right and past the trail south to the Yellow Cat uranium mines, and on across the border into Utah. This took me to the town of Green River where I crossed the river, turned south off U.S. 50 on to an unimproved trail-like road (now paved State Road 42) through the desert, where here and there active sand dunes covered and blocked the road, past the turnoff to Temple Mountain in the San Rafael Swell, and finally to Hanksville. I left Hanksville and drove along the Fremont River in my Jeep Station Wagon in mid-afternoon heading for Teasdale, where I was might spend the night. I noted a strange problem with the front end of the truck and stopped several times to see what the problem was. A bit later, all of sudden the Jeep veered sharply to the right onto the shoulder of the narrow dirt road and stopped. I got out and saw the right front wheel jammed up into the fender, apparently the axle had broken. I did not expect any traffic in this remote area, but waited and finally decided to camp.

So, I started to prepare to camp here for the night. I had finished my dinner, cleaned up, and got out my wooden folded cot and sleeping bag ready for the night. The sun was getting ready to set. In the quiet of the desert, all of a sudden I could hear a vehicle coming toward me miles away. I started to break camp and was finished by the time an ancient car drove up with steam jetting up out of the radiator. It looked like a 1930's Dodge. A young man with a dark beard yelled out, "Got any water?" When he got out, I noticed that he had on what appeared to be homemade clothes. A strong odor of muskmelons, onions, and fruits emitted from the back seat. He again wanted to know if I had water for the car radiator. I did, and we poured some in. He said he had driven up from the mouth of Red Canyon, where his hippy friends were sort of permanently camped with the Colorado River beach for swimming and a vegetable garden. I camped there myself late in 1953 after they had left, and their garden was still producing.

He had driven down White Canyon from Clay Hills ridge and ferried across the Colorado River at Hite. He said that he was going to Teasdale about 30 miles away, exactly where I needed to go; he agreed that I could go with him.. So I got ready and locked the Jeep. We left, and he talked about his life as a hippy, not working and owning anything; he quickly said that the car was his sister's, who lives in Teasdale. Soon, we came to the steep Blue Hill through the Mancos Shale, and practically without brakes, we flew down mercifully making all of the sharp curves. Stopping at the bottom at a creek, he refilled the radiator. Driving over gentle terrain, we reached Teasdale in the dark after 9 PM, and I was dropped off at Neal Henricks, who was working with J Fred Smith on a USGS project in the Capital Reef area.

The next morning, we phoned Grand Junction, and we were told that Bill Brueggemeyer would bring a new wheel assembly the next day. I spent the day with Neal visiting and sampling the old Oyler uranium mine. The next morning Neal took me out to the Jeep, and finally Bill with a helper arrived before noon; Neal returned to Teasdale. They got busy with the repairs, and we camped there that night. They finished installing the new wheel assembly by noon. I was able to continue on my way and drive up a dry wash the only way into Circle Cliffs to examine new uranium prospects in the Shinarump Conglomerate. Not a single car came by while Bill, his helper, and I were there, well over 24 hours and a night!

November 2006

On the Colorado Plateau during the first Uranium Boom
By Warren I. Finch

Uranium like all metals occurs naturally in forms called deposits that can be mined to obtain pure metal for various uses by the human society. The metals that were deposited in the geologic past prefer special kinds of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks and favorable geologic settings. In the United States, most productive uranium ores are in sandstone formations of certain geologic ages. The first choice in the Colorado Plateau was the Jurassic Morrison Formation formed in sedimentary environments during the time of the dinosaurs. Other choices in the Plateau were sandstones of Cretaceous, Triassic, Permian, and Pennsylvanian ages. Late in 1951, a new project for the USGS Colorado Plateau Uranium Program in the first uranium boom was undertaken to examine the sandstone deposits in formations other than the Morrison. After three years of experience in uranium exploration in the Uravan Mineral Belt, I was chosen to undertake the USGS Pre-Morrison Uranium Project.

The decision was made to study mainly the uranium-bearing Triassic sandstone formations, the second most common host of uranium deposits on the Plateau. Most Triassic uranium ores were in Utah and Arizona. Known Triassic uranium mines were in the Temple Mountain District in the San Rafael Swell in eastern Utah and in Monument Valley in northern Arizona. These mineralize areas, reconnaissance of other favorable areas, and mapping of newly found deposits, such as Steen's Mi Vida, Pick's Dirty River Mine, and smaller mines at Seven Mile, White Canyon, and Circle Cliffs were targets of study during the period of 1951-1954

In 1952, the first year of field work, I usually made two 10-day reconnaissance field trips each month, commonly without a field assistant. Uranium exploration was booming throughout the United States. I drove all the active bulldozer trails being built into steep canyons and on mesas to explore for uranium in eastern Utah, especially in the inter-river area between the Colorado River and the Green River and the large anticlinal structures the San Rafael Swell, Circle Cliffs Dome, and Monument Valley Upwarp in the Utah and Arizona desert. At the end of the day, I camped at the place where I stopped; I was alone usually with no other people passing by during the night. I slept in a sleeping bag on a wooden folding-cot sitting on the ground, and the cot headed to the open door of the Jeep station wagon. I slept alone under the stars. Only once during 1952 did rain make it necessary to put up a lean-to tarp shelter at the side of the vehicle.

In the desert, I had to get by on two five-gallon cans of water for as much a one week. With my Bunsen burner stove on the rear down-dropped door I heated my supper in open cans of stew or some other complete meal set in a pan of water. Later as the sun set, I used the warm water to wash my hands and face before bedding down at dark. Once camping at a site that had been used by others, the coyotes came up begging for food and they commonly howled in the night air. Another memory was pack rats investigating the open wagon who I felt tripping over my sleeping bag. Mountain lions were reported at some of the higher campsites, but never were seen or heard. In fact, my wife Mary was with me on one trip where we camped in mountain lion territory, but I never mentioned it to her until afterwards.

Although usually working alone, on rare occasions a field assistant was along on the trip. Maps of the region were essentially nonexistent; old regional geologic reports had poor maps with which to work. My Texaco road map was the best. In a story about USGS uranium studies on the Colorado Plateau by Mary Rabbit, there is a photo of me standing on a high point in the middle of the San Rafael Swell with a caption "A USGS geologist studies his geologic map in his reconnaissance of uranium on the Colorado Plateau". The map in my hands was the Texaco road map; it was the best map available at that time for my work. The program to produce 7.5- minute topographic maps in uranium areas had just started, so those modern maps were not available in 1952.

The results of this project were summarized in my first substantial career publication, the 1959 USGS Bulletin1074-D, on favorable areas for uranium exploration in Triassic rocks on the Colorado Plateau. A preliminary Trace Element report of about the same name was published in 1955.

October 2006

A Little Copper and a Chicken
By Jim Davis

From the Continental Divide Motozintla first appears as a closely packed village deep in a headwater valley of the Rio Grijalva. Viewed through the giant ponderosa pines from the highway just over the divide it is a pleasant sight. The town seems inaccessible from the cliff- carved highway that winds its way down into the valley. The highway perches almost directly over on the village, only at the last minute finding an exit to the town as the highway touches the valley floor. From the neat, flower lined zocalo we could see a large white mission church up in the rugged hills above town, solitary and magnificent in the late evening light. Beyond the mission the orange glow of the setting sun on the higher desert hills provided a peaceful background. (Perhaps the peace was illusionary, a couple of years later a man was burned at the stake for molesting a child!)

The next morning we could not find the usual green Petrofina filling station. Gasoline was for sale at a small store near the edge of town, we were told. After some searching we finally found the place in a back yard with a stack of barrels. Gasoline was obtained by siphoning out of a barrel into a five gallon bucket and carefully pouring it into the pickup's gas tank. While waiting for my turn I was approached by a disreputable looking type who wanted to change a wrinkled US $5 dollar bill for pesos. As I started to accommodate him Adrian, one of our interpreters, grabbed the money. "No, it's a counterfeit!" Adrian yelled as he thrust the grubby bill back at the man, explaining that it was a favorite trick to mask the fake by severely wrinkling and soiling it.

The day before we had prowled the hills along the Continental Divide on the Sierra de Soconosco. Mist wafted around us as we drove along the mountain crest. Through occasional holes in the fog we could see the Pacific to the west. The habitations are far apart up here, little white farm villas surrounded by maize on the steep mountainsides. These mountains are restless. Thick beds of white volcanic ash attest to recent eruptions from Volcan Tacana a few miles to the south. Thousands of feet below, in the valley of the Rio Huixtla, plumes of steam rise from hot springs at the village of Toliman. There are signs of copper porphyry in rocks laid bare by torrential runoffs. We found the high road from Buenos Aires to El Porvenir, despite recent repairs, barely passable because of the recent movement along a major fault traversing across the Sierra. This Orizaba fault zone bends to the north and parallels the Pacific coast for miles; to the east the same zone continues into the Caribbean. Crumbled sections of rock, still dusty from grinding movements, had dropped sections of the road several feet and seemed to be ready to creep again. The mountains are so high and steep here that when the road moves again it may travel from the zone of Ponderosa pine down to the tropics. We crossed the unstable ground with some trepidation. Further west at a coffee finca, along the same fault zone, the mountain always groans and moves after rainstorms. Sometime before a major section of the finca road had moved a thousand feet down into the valley. Just to the west the seafloor is ramming under Central America at a horizontal rate of three inches per year.

After filling up with the questionable gasoline, my interpreter Anna and I depart Motozintla for the lower parched hills near Mazapa. We will meet the rest of our reconnaissance party later in Frontera Comalapa.

A few miles down Arroyo de Mazapa Anna and I park under the shade of the trees next to a dusty creek. A trail threads its way through a miserable variety of spiny cactus and rocks black with desert varnish, both of which seemed to accentuate the shimmering heat. We were on the track of another mina rumored to exist in the dry hills above Mazapa. A mile or so up the trail we could see a patch of green marking a small rancho, usually the best place to start when looking for anything in this forsaken country-side.

Two ladies reluctantly came onto the patio and told of us of a possible mina up the dry arroyo beyond the house. I set out to have a look while Anna stayed to quiz the women further, knowing she might learn more as they became more comfortable with our presence and Anna's knack of getting information out of otherwise reticent natives. The mine turned out to be only a small depression, a possible prospect pit but the geology was lacking. By the time I returned an hour later the three women were talking and laughing as though they were long time friends. Consuelo, a tiny young and very pregnant woman, had informed Anna that she knew of bigger minas a few miles away in the hills of Arroyo Chimalapa. She would be glad to take us there and went to fetch her umbrella. I was more than a bit reluctant, not wanting to add mid-wife to my dossier, but Conselo ignored my protests and seated herself in the pickup. I had a guide.

Her directions took us several miles down the main road then a few miles to the end of a dirt road along the Rio Chimalapa. From there it would be only a couple of hours walk, she said. We looked at her she seemed more pregnant than when we started. We looked up into the barren, rugged hills and became even more concerned about the wisdom of letting this tiny pregnant women trudge several miles, but while we were debating, she started up the trail without so much as a glance back.

The first mile or so was pleasant; in and out of the shady trees growing along the river and sometimes dropping down next to the stream where the humidity, heavy but fragrant with blooming flowers, was at least a change from the scorching sun on the side hills. At one spot where the sparkling water chattered over the cobbles we came upon a cheerful family of farmers from the region of Chimalapa, far up the river. The men were unloading burlap bags full of beautiful large onions from their burros. The women sat on boulders with their bare feet in the stream, washing the harvest for a trip to the market in Motozintla. Several laughing children played in the water nearby. The neat stacks of white onions on the rocks and the happy people were a canvas of Mexican peasant life. As I impressed the scene upon my mind for a later sketch I could not think of anything that might improve their happiness. Perhaps that's a naive supposition, but then they didn't appear to envy our hot little party.

A short distance beyond the trail crossed a rusty, swinging cable suspension bridge and angled sharply away from the verdant riparian utopia. The well worn trail climbed steeply up dusty switchbacks. The blistering heat of the dry desert hills was barely affected by the meager shade of an occasional giant cactus. Consuelo moved steadily ahead of us, sometimes disappearing up the trail. Eventually she would wait in the skinny shade of a cactus, pushing on the minute we arrived. The narrow trail climbed higher and higher, the river only a thread of green in the valley far below. Still Consuelo kept going until we finally entered a large arroyo where we soon found her standing beside an old mine adit with spectacular green copper minerals in the outcrop and scattered down the hill below. Things were looking up for the prospector in me although my other senses were suffering from the heat and dryness. A bit beyond the old mine I was surprised to see a sprinkler system watering the slopes of the arroyo. The enterprising granjeros had rigged up the gravity fed irrigation from a spring further up the steep valley. More copper prospect holes are carved into the hillside along the trail.

Another patch of green foliage came into view up the trail and we soon arrived at a little rancho where the word of visitors spread rapidly and family members came out of the hills as by magic. We were served some cool water and the men told us about fabulous minerals around the rancho. One of the men took me up into the rocky hills out of the ranchero where he showed me an area of mineralization, this time lead and silver. As I sampled the rocks at one point along the trail a handsome young caballero, dressed in fine clothes, his saddle ornamented with silver conchas, came riding down the trail on his little burro. I wondered what his business and where he might be going, for it was a long way to the nearest poblacion of any note. Perhaps he was courting.

It turned out that Consuelo was somehow related to the family at the ranchero. By the time I returned later in the afternoon she had had a good visit and bought a chicken. In addition to my samples I carried a bag with the chicken on our way out. I carefully gripped the bag by its side to keep it from dragging, and at the same time holding the sack away from me to avoid any dripping blood. Halfway down the trail I happened to look down and was quite surprised to see the chicken's head protruding from the top of the sack. It was quite alive and enjoying the trip without so much as a cluck. Consuelo and I must have been a sight, walking together--she barely reaching above my waist and me with a live chicken in a bag!

Jim Davis
September 20, 2006

May 2006

35mm Artillery at the Schwartzwalder Mine Vent Raise - Part I

By Jim A. Paschis

Peak prices for uranium ore encouraged exploration in the late 1970's. Mines in operation continued development and production. So also did mining of uraninite breccia veins at the Schwartzwalder orebody. These continued along the steeply plunging, brittle, iron-rich, host rock trend. Accordingly, there was a need for more radon ventilation and secondary escape for underground staff in that vicinity. The mining trend was mainly downward but with a horizontal component to the southwest. In that direction, Western Nuclear leased, and was involved in core drilling, their adjacent Section 36. They had mentioned some significant silver mineralized core intercept often associated in vein-type uranium ore.

Mark Davis, Erik Bruner, Bill Lyman, and Larry Van Lanningham of Cotter Corporation explained the engineering needs for the ventillation development project. As staff exploration geologist peripheral to the mine, my mission was to present to them borehole location options based on geology, access, and future mine development. They chose option two, 700 feet in elevation above the mine workings for the borehole collar. The base of this planned boring was accessed though the Steve (1st) level adit then down the Number 2 Shaft 700 feet, far out along the 7th level drift.

I was concurrently involved with surface NX core drilling exploration, seeking structural, stratigraphic, and mineralization potential between the selected vent borehole collar on Section 25 and the adjacent Western Nuclear lease. J.S. Redpath Inc., specified the vent pilot borehole was to be 10 inches in diameter. They drilled it using four-foot-long, 900-pound lengths of steel. The pilot hole was up-reamed 1,400 feet, enlarging it to 96-inch diameter from the 7th level, using a hydraulic-powered Robbins Raise Borer. These surface efforts indicated that Schwartzwalder mining was developing headings straight toward exploration drilling targets across the fence on Section 36. Western Nuclear staff geologists Jim Johnston and Jack Stark noticed this intense activity and became interested and cordial.

Winter came on and deepened as Boyles Brothers Drilling Company pumped water from the mine up to the drilling sites for the Longyear 35 rigs. The output from the positive displacement pump was conveyed through thick-walled, high-pressure capacity, orange plastic, 35mm i.d. tubing. As single digit temperatures arrived, the pump was either to be running or the water line was to be completely back-drained. Western Nuclear trucked their drill water in from a long southern road and therefore were not concerned about water line freezing.

I drove up the hairpin switchbacks and crossed over dumps from portals which had been the discoveries worked by Fred Schwartzwalder back in the early 1950's. I gave him a mental salute, noting that if the after life permitted communications with those gone before, this prospector would be very high on my list to hear his uranium discovery story that I had only known third-hand. Cotter kindly granted access for Western Nuclear staff also along this same steep roadway. Should Western Nuclear make a discovery that led to mining, that ore would probably be developed through Schwartzwalder workings and milled at Cotter's facility in Canon City.

As Jim Johnston and I both arrived near the rigs, it was an ominous sign to see the driller disconnecting the thick water line at the whip check. Frozen almost stiff was that long orange line that snaked back down into Ralston Creek Canyon. Armed with propane torches, the drillers walked along the line and lifted it up. With the internal cracking sound of frozen solid contents, we knew it would be a while before drilling would start that cold sunny day. The line was heated with torches and the warming sun peered over the crest of the Fountain Formation hogback to the east. As we walked over to the line a bit later, I became optimistic as the water seemed to be surging and squishing past the ice blockages. Slowly foot-long segments of ice rods began to emerge at the open end of the line. The pump at the source likely sensed the blockage being released and revved up a bit more. Then Jim and I noticed more ice "cores" began moving, leaving piles like frozen "doo-doo" with spurts of water between. Then the discharge paused and suddenly the ice really broke loose, launching cores in all directions as the free end of that orange viper recoiled indiscriminately - even towards us! We ran for cover behind the Western Nuclear white Ford pickup. The next round came at us and with a loud "bang!" and put a dent in the right rear fender. A few more pieces came out, then continuous liquid flowed and we were less intimidated.

As the artillery ended, Jim asked me how it was going with the mine and raise-bore whose collar was in sight of the Western Nuclear property line. I explained the mine was producing more with the rising price of U308. It hoisted out a lot of barren mica schist rock from the 7th level as the up-reaming started. The raise bore was situated where management had asked me to select a site that no likelihood of ever being mined deep underground might compromise the vent. Jim's face turned pretty sad as he realized that Cotter Corporation felt sure no Schwartzwalder uranium ore trended toward Western Nuclear leased ground. Jim drove away to check on progress at his drilling rig across the fence.

Part II

This continues the previous account of the Robbins raise borer collared from the surface at 7,200 feet down to 5,808 feet above msl. This eight-foot diameter section was to exhaust air conveyed through the active uranium stopes and underground workings. The internal No. 2 shaft and the smaller, inclined calyx intakes, with 75 horsepower fans, were the intake supplies for fresh air to the miners. Stoped out workings were sealed off with bulkheads for radon control and ventilation efficiency at the Schwartzwalder mine. The exhaust raise was in the poorest host rock for uranium vein mineralization: the very ductile mica schist. Whenever the schist was intersected by ore-bearing veins, they would terminate mineralization and alteration within about five feet of strike. As planned, the exhaust borehole was positioned in mica schist so to be remote from any future mining thereby maintaining its structural integrity to the 7th level of the mine.

I was later informed that the raise was successful and it would be extended by a second segment to reach the bottom of the mine. I refused to guarantee that mica schist would continue entirely below the borehole. At this time the internal No. 3 shaft reached the 19th level some 4,555 feet above msl. Essentially, this meant an additional 1,253 feet of pilot boring followed by hydraulic- powered, eight-foot diameter up-reaming. However, below the 7th level this segment could probably depart the mica schist and enter the brittle host rocks of the mine and included: garnet biotite gneiss, quartz biotite schist, quartzite and a more ductile, hornblende gneiss. This lithology at the deposit was controlled by the complexly folded, Precambrian-age, overturned synform with steep southeast dipping limbs.

The raise borer was mobilized down the No. 2 shaft, out to the face of the 7th level and set up close to the base of the upper 1,200 foot segment of the raise. Tramming of cuttings generated by the pilot boring were from the 7th level, then up the No. 2 shaft and out the Steve (1st level) portal. When the pilot bore reached the 19th level, the eight-foot diameter reaming head was then attached. Cuttings were generated, with muck falling to the 19th level. LHDs hauled muck to the loading pocket near the base of the No. 3 shaft which was collared on the 10th level. From there transfer was then to No. 2 and out the portal. About halfway up as up-reaming progressed, the rate of advance had exceeded the removal of cuttings on one occasion. Effort was made to catch up by the development crew on the 19th level. This seemed to have been accomplished until it was observed that as the up-reaming resumed, no cuttings were dropping down to the 19th level. Mine engineering staff concluded that the cuttings had bridged the new borehole somewhere below the reamer head and the 19th level. Water from the 7th level was used to add pressure and concurrently wash out finer cuttings to release the bridge. A small volume of water made it through, then the Mike Gallagher, mine surveyor, heard the sound of cuttings and water coming down the partially completed part of the borehole. Then followed a tremendous cascade that began filling the face and flowed down the grade toward him to the level station a length of 1,100 feet. He ran for the No. 3 shaft but no cage was at the station. He chose to turn toward and climb up the ladder escape way. There he was safe as water and fine cuttings reached up to the second rung. The borehole was completed for a total length of nearly 2,600 feet with a hefty airflow out the top at the collar.

Back on the 7th level, I had a look down into the eight-foot diameter of darkness with my mine light and decided that a borehole uranium log should be obtained. A uranium logging contractor was called in to make the equivalent uranium (eU) survey beginning at this level. Within about 70 feet a strong gamma response was measured. I then directed that three other logs be taken along quarter circle positions of the three remaining quadrants. Additional gamma intercepts, both above and below the initial one, were then detected. From these four gamma intercepts, I was able to report the approximate dip and strike of a +1% eU intercept to John Haley, chief mine geologist. John was reasonably pleased. After some calculations from underground diamond drill core intercepts and comparisons on working mine cross sections, he concluded that this uranium vein intercept just below the 7th level, emanated as a horsetail, dipping down a distance of approximately 1,150 feet between the 14th and 15th levels from the Illinois vein. (This east-dipping vein was the master structure for all the east-dipping horsetail veins in the mine.) This further attested to the essential importance of the brittle host rocks because, here the vein strike length was significantly shorter than the dip dimension. Uranium production continued 20 more years at the Schwartzwalder Mine.

The Miner & the Geologist

by James F. Davis

Joe Highsmith was a good miner. He knew how to put a hole into rock and get the values out. His mines often showed innovations gleaned from his widely varied experience; everything from a specialty welder at movie studios, mechanic, inventor and builder of underground mine equipment, to miner and prospector. Give him a gold pan and he'd find gold. Give him a pile of iron and he'd turn it into a piece of mining equipment. Then he'd take that equipment and go find something to mine. He was good at any thing he undertook, but he was a miner at heart.

There's something special about a small underground mine. Anyone can dig a hole on the surface, but takes a special breed of miner to burrow deep into a hill or sometimes go straight down, surrounded by rocks and darkness and danger and take the adit or shaft where they want it to go, safely, for maybe only a little bit of ore. And make it pay. No reserves blocked out ahead of mining like a large company - Just experience, astute observation, intuition, hope and often times luck.

Several few years ago I was the geologist for a custom uranium milling company. One of my jobs was to help the independent miners with sampling, surveying, geology or whatever it took to get more ore coming into the company's hungry mill. Joe was one of our shippers. From little mines in limestone caverns and old karst topography filled with uranium-rich rock he mined and shipped occasional truckloads of high-grade uranium ore to our mill.

On one trip I visited Joe at his Dandy uranium mine on the Pryor Mountains in Montana. I found him down in the small mine alone. He had sent his miners home after they had mined out the last of a high-grade pod of ore in a big cavern they had been working for months. The cavern had been filled with mud and rocks from ancient floods and later enriched with uranium.

Now it was just a big dark hole a hundred feet below the surface. With the mining it had been reconfigured back to the barren limestone walls of the original cave. Joe and his men had scraped out every last teaspoon of pay dirt. The walls of the reconstituted cavern were as clean as a well licked cake frosting bowl. The situation for finding more ore looked glum.

From his perch on a limestone boulder in the big cavern Joe looked happy to see me. Joe was a lot like the rock he sat on steady and stalwart, even squarely built. I looked around the stope at the stark walls of limestone. Here and there little vugs in the wallrock were lined with dogstooth spar crystals that glistened like fake diamonds. It was nice to look at but for the possibility of more uranium ore it looked pretty hopeless to me. Joe didn't seem down though, and after our hellos he asked, "Jim, what do you know about caverns? Why are they in some parts of the limestone and not in others?"

I knew Joe well enough to gather that he was working on an idea and probably knew more than I did about the subject, but he was pretty clever when it came to ferreting out every bit of information before he acted. He'd ask simple questions and always get something out of the answers.

"Joe, I'm betting that you know more about these caves than I do but I'd venture a guess that this Madison Limestone was folded and thrust up as the Pryor Mountains in late Cretaceous time -about 60 or 70 million years ago. About the same time as the Bighorn Mountains over across the canyon. The folding would have created fractures in the rock that were a starting place for water to gradually dissolve away the limestone. I suppose that the climate was a lot wetter than it is now, water gradually widened the fractures into caverns, especially at the intersections of the cracks.

Later," I paused, thinking I had seen the whites of Joe's eyes as he rolled them up. He didn't smile though, so I continued unabashed. "Later, some of these caverns collapsed, forming sink holes or karst topography. These sink holes and some of the caverns were later filled in with sand and mud. After that the calcite and selenite crystals were formed, then mineralized ground water circulated through the fill, depositing the uranium and a little bit of vanadium.

Joe sort of smiled. I could almost hear him thinking. Okay Jim, I know you're a geologist, but how's that going to help me find more ore? Instead, he was polite and asked. "Okay, are the location of these caverns predictable at all?"

"Gosh, Joe," I said, trying to come up with a geologically intelligent answer, "not very, except maybe there's some relationship to the fracture intensity and pattern. Of course you would expect the intersection of major fracture zones to be the best place. Oh, yeah! There is a certain stratigraphic level in the Madison limestone that is more cavern forming, so I guess you would stick with that zone."

Joe nodded, looking pleased as though I might have confirmed another piece of the puzzle, or maybe he was happy that I had started talking common sense instead of going off on some theoretical tangent. Jumping down off his perch he walked over to the far wall of the cavern. There he put his finger on a tiny crack running vertically through the limestone with just a film of yellow uranium mineral in it.

"Jim, I've been studying the caves we know about around here and there is sort of a rough spacing. That would fit with what you just told me about the spacing of fractures. I'm wondering if we drift along this crack for a hundred feet or so we might find another cavern filled with ore." That was Joe. It was really his idea but he was making me feel good, as though my input was the key he'd been looking for.

I looked at the crack with its fingernail thick coating of yellow uranium and inwardly wondered if I should tell Joe to forget it and look for something better. I didn't, because I knew he was going to do it anyway and then maybe it wasn't a bad idea after all. In looking for ore you can expect the unexpected. It took guts too. The cost of driving a hundred feet or more of adit wasn't chicken feed, especially if it's your own money with poor odds on getting it back. But that's mining. Miners like Joe often went broke but they never made money by being shrinking violets either.

A couple of months later Joe called me, wondering if I would mind coming up and doing some surveying for him.

"Sure Joe, I'm due to make the rounds up there anyway. By the way, how's the exploration drift coming along?"

"Well, Jim I wanted to talk to you about that too. I'll save it for when you get here."

"Crap!" I muttered to myself after he hung up. "I should have told him to not to spend his money on that damn crack."

I left early the next day and was at the mine by mid-morning. I could hear equipment working down in the mine and was putting on my hard hat and light to go down when I heard one of Joe's handcrafted ore-haulers grinding up the spiral ramp that led down into the underground mine. In a minute it came roaring out of the tunnel, bouncing on its large tires with a load of rock in the bucket. It was Joe driving, grinning like he had a joke to tell me. At least he was smiling. I waited until he dumped the load then walked over as he climbed down out of the machine.

"Jim, take a look at this." We shook hands and he led the way around to a pile in front of the hauler. He didn't have to say anything. There was a pile of the brightest yellow ore one could ever hope for. "We drifted for hundred and twenty feet along that skinny little crack!" Joe chortled. "Nothing! Then there it was. It's a damn big cave and half filled with stuff like this.

"Tell me, Jim, is there any way you could map out these fracture systems on the surface? I was getting pretty nervous by the time we'd drifted through a hundred and twenty feet of barren limestone."

Mining and frontier stories. This series of stories was instituted in 2004.

Iron, Tin and Ptarmigan

GOT GOLD ?
Near the mouth of Pacific Creek, Wyoming U.S.A.

by Jim A. Paschis

Three of us left our home town bound for college. Chester got his PhD in astrophysics at NMIMT, Rich got his BS in chemical engineering at Lafayette and an MBA, and I became a geologist. Working for Chester, I was involved in examining gold placers that might be conducive to in-situ leach mining using our newly patented iodine lixiviant. I examined locations in Wyoming and Alaska.

Rich had supervised several plants back east working mainly in organic chemistry. Later he found industrial mineral deposits and their process metallurgy to be very interesting and worked in that area around the world. We re-bonded our friendship in person after 30 years with a tour of the west. On the way to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks we stopped in Dubois, Wyoming. After a pleasant breakfast we stopped in the hardware store. Failing to find any gold pans in stock plan "B" was a nine-inch pie pan and a tulip bulb planter. We crested Togwotee Pass with the morning sun in our rear window. Rich was impressed with his first onset to the parks as the magnificent Tetons and Jackson Lake filled our vista. We spent a good part of the day touring Jackson. I spoke of placer gold and began to interest him in trying out the pan. With our National Parks Pass we entered Grand Teton via the bridge over Pacific Creek.

I described, then demonstrated, the technique of heavy mineral (black sand) separation from metaquartzite bank gravels near the bridge. He had heard of the method but only in the metallurgical classroom. He gave it a try and got the hang of it properly keeping the outfall of the pan contents under water as shown in the first figure. The separation and small concentrate of fine black sands was reasonably accomplished. As the sun began shadowing the south side of the creek it became difficult to see any "color" in the fine heavies. Checking the concentrate with my hand lens, a few tiny grains looked rather yellowish. He felt good about making the concentrate but was not totally sure about gold being present. So we collected the few cubic millimeters of "cons" into an empty film can and labelled it RLZ-1 for a check under the microscope on my return to Boulder.

Next week viewing under the microscope the cons contained six gold grains of .2 to .4 millimeters length. Other minerals with gold included: quartz, zircon, monazite, rutile and mainly magnetite shown in the second figure. For fun, I wrote up my consulting geological report including a map, photomicrographs, and invoice. I stated the fee would be waived if we could see more of the west next summer. He called me later saying that we should have another "big adventure". The next summer a round trip ticket arrived and we toured Vancover Island, BC

Mining and Frontier Stories

GOT GOLD? Part II
Near the mouth of Pacific Creek, Wyoming, USA

This continues the previous discussion of panning gravels from Pacific Creek, in Grand Teton National Park, Northwestern, Wyoming. The gold panning yielded a small concentrate of black sands which were subsequently examined under the microscope. This revealed the minerals: gold, zircon, rutile, monazite, magnetite, and quartz shown in the first figure. The small quartz crystals generally were clear and rounded, but curiously some had prismatic faces of which a few had recognizable pyramidal termination. A second area of the black sand concentrate examined contained five additional ragged gold grains and smaller, well-rounded magnetite grains shown in the second figure. (The largest of the gold grains is 0.3 millimeters long). The surficial presentation of the gold is in stark contrast with the magnetite in this clay-poor, coarse sediment laden creek. Here, extremely soft and malleable gold in this alluvial placer would be expected to have rounded edges and smoothed surfaces. But instead, in this sample, the gold grains show ragged edges and very rough surfaces suggesting short travel. The much harder magnetite is rather well rounded, attributable to alluvial abrasion along the stream course.

The rough appearance of the gold here is not the result of: recent liberation from a nearby hydrothermal vein source, alluvial abrasion, or alloying metal (silver and copper) dissolution, but more likely in-situ gold precipitation. Gold grain formation could be attributed to selectively solubilizing and precipitating bacteria. Work by Dave Craw, University of Otago, has shown gold nuggets weighing 3 grams formed through bacterial mechanisms in New Zealand placers. Stylianos-Savvas P. Augustithis attributed PGM nuggets to be grown by accretion with similar rough appearance in lateritic soils overlying the ultrabasic complex at the sacrifice of sperrylite from Yubdo, Western Ethiopia.

Frontier Memoir Written by J. W. Winingar in 1926 (Jim Davis' greatgrandfather)